


Read My Lips

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Borderline Personality Disorder, Deaf Castiel, Deaf Character, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Sad Dean, Songfic, one f bomb no biggie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3806116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas was familiar with music, but never was he an avid listener until he met an eleventh grader with fair caramel hair and dimples the size of a nickel’s skinny.<br/>Dean loved all music, but he was without a doubt a diehard classic rock enthusiast. No matter how much sand passes through the universal hourglass, he would always be stuck in the Dark Side of the Moon. And Cas loved and sang along with him. Zeppelin, Rush, AC/DC—so long as Dean knew how to play it, Cas would hear it (“Because a boom box just doesn’t cut it, Cas, you need to hear Skynyrd straight from the strings.”). </p><p>Dean Winchester is a fresh-faced twenty-year-old struggling with BPD. Castiel Novak may be deaf, but he isn't blind when it comes to the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Read My Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Most italicize indicates SNL communication unless otherwise noted.

It’s the way he says it that throws him off.

 

They were talking about the mitochondrial function when it happened. His mouth pursed tight like a fresh crease. His nose wriggled in a way that would’ve been endearing if his nostrils weren’t flared like two gaping wormholes. His jaw was tight and his hazel eyes carried a weight far greater than the one on his shoulders.

 

He wasn’t angry, but he was upset—that much he knew.

 

“What’s wrong, Sam?” was what he thought he said before realizing that the words hadn’t come out. Sometimes he felt like he was trapped behind a pressurized door, where all forms of verbal communication either passes through on a whim or gets lost in the vacuum of space.

 

He tried again. No articulation, just signs. _Sam?_

 

“It’s nothing, Cas,” the sophomore assured, glancing up from his gargantuan textbook with a feigned smile. Then, in sign: _It’s Dean._

 

Now he understood. Neither of them has seen the firstborn in what felt like ages. The prime reason they were anxious was that he suffered from BPD. It was a condition that Sam, as kind as he is, places on his unerringly deadbeat father, John, who left after a faulty cable wire swallowed the life of his wife, Mary Winchester.

 

Dean was two months shy of turning five. Sam was still in diapers.

 

To say that the brothers sifted through foster care would be a huge understatement. It wasn’t until an angel by the name of Bobby Singer, a disappointed (also a huge understatement) friend of John’s took the boys under his wing that the two boys had a place they could call home.

 

Castiel had the occasion of meeting the man who single-handedly turned his friend’s life around before the cancer spread. Although life on the road as a twenty-four hour roadside assistance technician kept him busy, he seemed like a decent enough man, someone both boys looked to with diamond eyes.

 

But even someone as paternal as he couldn’t mend the damage employed on the eldest boy. Dean was fighting a current the size of a tsunami. What was important was not that he saw to proper treatment (if their piggies wouldn’t bust on a doctor’s visit alone), but that he had people like he and Sam—the only people left, really—that were there for him come whenever.

_Where is he?_

 

With webbed fingers, Sam placed his dominant hand on the side of his face before bringing both to his chest and back out again, indicating that he was in his bedroom.

“It’s impossible for photosynthesis to exist within the walls of the mitochondria.”

 

In translation: _He’s been holed up for a few days, only comes out for breakfast._

 

_Doesn’t he have work today?_

 

_I had to call him in sick._

 

_You didn’t knock?_

 

_You try pushing a six-foot grump out of an eight-by-ten frame._

 

Cas knew he would’ve used a much weightier word had his SNL terminology been more fluent. Because he was university bound (Stanford, no less), Sam was enrolled in three semesters’ worth of advanced Espanola until his senior year. He didn’t blame the youngest for slipping a little in his practice.

 

He would’ve laughed at the preceding comment had he the reassurance that his friend wasn’t in potential danger. This wasn’t like Dean. For someone without an official diagnosis, he handled his condition well.

 

Save for rare moments like these. On these days, he and Sam (usually Sam, since he was home more often and Cas figured that, despite their amicable friendship, Sam was still his brother) had to find a way to drag him out of his depression without ripping the skin from under his teeth.

 

A part of Cas feels like Sam blames himself for the first incision. He startled Dean so bad coming into his room that his hand, holding a razorblade, flew fast and hot over his wrist.

 

The youngest hasn’t bid his brother a happy birthday since.

 

“You look worried, fellas.”

 

Cas hadn’t heard the pertness in his tone, but he felt the vibration underneath his feet loud and clear. Before he knew it, Dean stood in the living room, hands on his waist. Cas silently searched for any new or unusual marks before coming to the conclusion that the man was just… giddy. The senior couldn’t help smile.

 

Sam was moderately suspicious, judging by the barely-there squint he gave him. He looked from Cas then back to his brother. “Uh, yeah, Trig will do that.”

 

“That’s weird; I don’t remember the mitochondria in the triangular formula.”

 

“That’s because we were studying Trigonometry before.” Cas flushed as red as a tomato as soon as he said it. He wasn’t one for speaking out of turn, not when he could feel the way his tongue rolled over the syllables and knew he sounded like someone with a bad case of marble mouth, but Sam desperately needed the rescue.

 

Dean ducked his head and Cas could’ve sworn his cheeks were red, too. “Right,” he said, then: “Yeah, course. Sorry, I didn’t even think.”

 

He remembered when he first met the mechanic. It was freshman year; first day of P.E. and Cas was already failing with flying colors. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was the only deaf kid in his class, he had to be the only asthmatic too. A two-mile lap had him down on his knees, glasses out of reach. The last sensation he felt before he fell was his blood pumping madly through his ears.

 

He woke up a couple hours later in a dewy field, a strong hand braced on his chest, only this time he had full control of his lungs. There was an inhaler a few inches from his face that belonged to one very attractive junior. (Dean failed P.E. twice.)

 

Guess he wasn’t the only asthmatic after all.

 

“Hi, um—don’t freak out but you fainted… but you’re okay now.” Then, a rash moment later: “I mean, obviously you’re awake…and breathing …”

 

Castiel was shyer than a carnation in early spring. Between Dean’s breath-taking (no pun intended) green eyes and the nervous little lip bite he was giving him, he managed to repay the boy with a raspy thank you.

 

Without another word, Dean reached for Cas’s glasses he kept hung on the pocket of his flannel shirt. He breathed on the frame and gave it a good cleaning with his skilled fingers before setting them carefully on the bridge of his nose. They’ve been good friends since.

 

And Cas may or may not have been completely smitten with him.

 

_Hey, Cas, can I borrow you for a second?_

 

Luckily, the younger boy was gaping at him the whole time so he saw his hands. Cas shook his head, rousing from his daydreams, and though he didn’t need to, Dean took his hand as he guided him down the hallway into his room.

 

Splayed before him wasn’t an uncommon sight. Dean’s bed was typically piled high with overdue laundry (including the unmentionables—“boxer-brief hybrids”, as Dean put it) and his floor was littered with elapsed posters, parking tickets, and, if you can believe it, U-Haul boxes from his move-in two years ago.

 

However, there was something unusual about the whole scene. Some of the papers sprinkled at random were music sheets—he could tell by the thick, black lines running horizontal across the pages. Before he could warm up his fingers he was sitting crisscross in front of Dean’s guitar.

 

Cas was familiar with music, but never was he an avid listener until he met an eleventh grader with fair caramel hair and dimples the size of a nickel’s skinny.

 

Dean loved all music, but he was without a doubt a diehard classic rock enthusiast. No matter how much sand passes through the universal hourglass, he would always be stuck in the Dark Side of the Moon.

 

And Cas loved and sang along with him. Zeppelin, Rush, AC/DC—so long as Dean knew how to play it, Cas would hear it (“Because a boom box just doesn’t cut it, Cas, you need to hear Skynyrd straight from the strings.”).

 

As it turned out, Dean was right. More than the chords and the lyrics, it was the vibration of the instrument; it was the sensation that journeyed through his fingers into the very core of his soul that he never knew was there. The feeling alone was better than sex (not that he and his teenage ambitions have ever gotten past first base, but it was a safe assumption).

 

He learned to fully appreciate music. Now he couldn’t get enough of it.

 

Dean sign-called him a hippy, but judging by the obvious blush that crowded his high-set cheekbones, it wasn’t a wholehearted insult.

 

Cas was immediately transfixed on the six-stringed apparatus and it wasn’t until Dean’s fingers lifted his chin that his focus was back on Dean’s lips. Briefly he wondered if it made him uncomfortable, Cas looking there all the time—always searching, waiting with patient blue eyes. “As you may or may not know, I’m not the best with words so I tried to find a song that spoke for me. I guess this is a tribute, or, um”— _a proper thank you_ , he signed—“for everything.”

 

_Because, let’s face it, you’re kinda stuck with me, sorry._

 

Cas giggled at the unspoken comment. Dean smiled before regressing into the same lip bite he supplied Cas with three years ago.

 

The former boy had one hand on the trunk of the guitar while he signed with the other, amused. _Are you going to play now?_

 

“You can talk to me, Cas, you know that.”

 

Cas’s mouth dipped. _I sound like an idiot._

 

“You sound fine, Cas,” he said, placing his hand on top of his. A small smile flooded his troubled face as he felt Dean run his thumb over his. “You’re more than fine.”

 

God, he’d never understand where Dean got his patience; waiting on Cas almost a whole few seconds just to compose one word. Sometimes it was so infuriating that he would resort to jotting the message down on a spare piece of paper.

 

But there was something in the way that Dean looked at him when he did sign, something that made him want to articulate until his fingers cramped.

 

And then Dean was strumming. It was a song different from what he usually played. It was an intimate melody despite the swift pound beneath his fingers wherein, using Dean’s permissive lips as a conduit, it told a story of

 

“Today is gonna be the day

That they’re gonna throw it back to you

By now you should’ve somehow

Realized what you gotta do…”

 

    Time,

 

“There are many things that I

Would like to say to you

But I don’t know how…”

 

    Struggle,

 

“Because maybe

You’re gonna be the one that saves me

And after all

You’re my wonderwall…”

 

   And… love?

 

A moment’s hesitation had Cas staring at him through tempered eyes. “Cas?”

 

_This is what you’ve been doing in your room this whole time?_

 

Dean didn’t need to hear the ire on his tongue to know he was mad. He gulped and before he could even try to conceive how to substantiate his actions, Cas had his hands fisted in the lapels of his shirt. Though his eyes softened, his grip was tight under his nose.

 

He may or may not have peed a little.

 

“C-Cas?” he tried again, this time in a stammer. “What’re you doing?”

 

Cas leaned in close, returning his hand to Dean’s, and replied, “Read my lips.”

 

The last of the musician’s thoughts was swallowed in a hungry kiss.

 

Later that night found Dean and his newly claimed lover on the living room couch. The senior was leaning heavily against him, dark and slightly matted down coils prickling his shoulder from where the collar on his Ramones shirt had slipped, not that he minded. They were watching some reality show with alleged ghosts and demonic possessions, but he was too focused on puppy dog Cas to care.

 

Sam came in, set on getting to the kitchen (probably to make one of those stupid salad shakes), and nearly did a double take when he saw the two curled up on the loveseat that clearly lived up to its name. He looked as angry as his nerd counterpart and he didn’t take long mulling over a response.

 

 _You’re a fucking dick_.

 

Dean used one hand to raise Cas’s chin to kiss him, hard.

 

The other gave him the universal bird.

 

Though he couldn’t see, Sam smiled. And despite himself, Dean smiled too because for the first time in his life, he was truly happy.


End file.
